Tiare Taporo III

Hi
Not a lot to report at this stage. We left Whangarei 6 days ago on the 14th. and had a pleasant trip up the coast to the Bay of Islands stopping for a night at Mimiwhangata. The sailing was scrappy as there wasn't enough wind and what there was was from an unfriendly quarter!! However, we used our UPS for the 1st. time and were reasonably pleased with its performance but, as it is primarily a downwind sail and we were sailing upwind it didn't make a lot of difference. But it looked good in all its blue and yellow glory! We've been in the BOI for the last few days getting our laundry done in Russell as well as some re-provisioning. We also today went to Opua to sort out a problem with the watermaker and thankfully that was a simple fix. The weather forecast for the next couple of days isn't that good with strong northerlies (up to 30 knots) and rain. We had a great sail from Opua with full Genoa, staysail and reefed main and were consistently acheiving 5-6 knots in only 15 knots of breeze. If this is an indication of future passage making potential we will be very satisfied. We are now (2150) anchored off the southern end of Moturua Is. We are sheltered here and looking forward to another boisterous sail tomorrow.
We are also looking forward to Gina's son Perry joining us for a night and couple of days on Saturday when the weather forecast is better. It will be good to be able to show him something of the BOI. After that the plan is to head north - possibly up to North Cape and then down to the Hauraki Gulf. We'll keep you posted. For those navigation buffs our current position is latitude 35 degrees 13.732 minutes south longitude 174 degrees 11.833 minutes east.
Then it's back to Whangarei for another haulout before being finally ready for the big OE at the end of April.
Hope this finds you all well.
Cheers,
Jim and Gina

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